A tool for assessing wellbeing

A couple of weeks ago I led a retreat session for clergywomen. My instruction from the retreat organizer was simply to facilitate a conversation among the participants: after twenty months of pandemic ministry (plus other stressors exacerbated by Covid), what is their state of being?

I knew that if these women were like me, it might be difficult for them to separate areas in which they are doing ok from those in which they’re not. After all, our lives have become a tangle of tugs on our energy, brain space, and time. So I put together a very non-scientific assessment based on the PERMA model developed by Martin Seligman. In Seligman’s field of positive psychology, the focus is on what supports flourishing, not what will relieve distress. The assessment, then, asks takers to evaluate the truth of statements on a scale of 1 to 5 in those areas most tied to thriving: positive emotions, sense of engagement in their lives and work, health of their relationships, overarching sense of meaning, and feeling of accomplishment. I tailored these statements to ministry and added in a few other statements about caring for physical health. The goal of this tool was to help my session participants celebrate what’s going well (4s and 5s) and become more aware of parts of their lives that might need further attention in order to increase overall wellbeing (1s and 2s).

If this tool could be helpful to you, I offer it for your use. Feel free to download and/or share it. And, if you identify a particular aspect in which you’d like to make strides, let’s talk about how coaching could help you with that.

Click on the image to download a PDF of the wellbeing assessment.